Securely Erasing Your SSD with Linux: A How-To

Posted on July 22, 2013 9:00 AM by Techgage Staff

Tired of dealing with slowed performance or some bizarre partition error with your SSD? Sometimes, the solution is as simple as a secure erase – that is, to bring the drive back to its innate, factory-fresh state. Thanks to Linux, getting this job done is easier than ever. Join us, as we cover multiple methods for getting the job done.

Whether for slowed performance or some other issue that’s crept up, sometimes securely erasing your SSD is the solution needed. While there are a number of ways to get the deed done, most solutions are hit-or-miss, and are generally not that elegant. In my personal experience, the easiest way to secure erase a drive is through Linux, and as the title of this article suggests, that’s exactly the route we’re taking here. The best part? You don’t need to understand Linux to follow this guide.

First things first: if you don’t already have a version of Linux installed, you’ll need to download a distro and create a bootable CD-ROM or flash drive. If your intention is to only secure erase an SSD, it’s recommended you download Parted Magic, a distro designed around managing storage. If you’d rather have a bootable Linux environment that’s setup like a real desktop, then another distro can be used, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. For this article, I’m using Linux Deepin, in addition to Parted Magic.

Once your chosen ISO is downloaded, you can burn it to a CD-ROM or go the flash drive route. When given the choice, I recommend using a flash drive, as it’s more flexible, and faster to boot (no pun). To create a bootable flash drive, you’ll want to grab UNetbootin, run it (no install necessary), click the “Diskimage” option, search for your ISO, select the proper drive, and hit “OK”. Once all of the files are copied over, you’ll be able to boot into that flash device.